Erk Posted June 11, 2011 Report Share Posted June 11, 2011 Every so often I need to write something or I go crazy. Here's an introduction to a storyline I have in mind. Curious what people think. --------------------------------------------------------- My name is Richard Koh, and I haven't seen another living human in months. I'm not sure how many months. There were some bad days, and I stopped keeping track. It's spring now, and I lost Maggie last autumn. Yesterday I found a gas station. It was remarkable. Untouched. I have no idea how. I'm out in the middle of nowhere, and maybe that's why. It was buttoned up all nicely: door locked, thief-proof shutters rolled down, trash cans emptied. Whoever owned it loved it; that and its isolation saved it from the decay everywhere else. It took me all day to bust that lock, even after all the practice I've had. Anyway, I got in, and it was like walking into a museum. Chips in bags on the shelves, cans of coke neatly lined up in darkened, warm coolers, cash register sitting out on the counter. It was an old, classic looking register: digital display, built-in controls, not meant to be hooked up to a touch screen computer or anything. Really Mom and Pop. I love it. I think I'll settle in here for a while. At first I messed around in the dark, but pretty soon I got the shutters open. It was late, but it's springtime in the prairies and the daylight lingers for a long time. I found all kinds of treasures I thought I'd never see. Batteries (lithium ion, and still good), canned food, the aforementioned chips. This notebook. That was a big find. I've been hearing my own voice louder and louder in my head since winter started. Writing this down is already helping. That's a funny story. I don't know who I'm writing to. What if I'm the last living human? Am I writing to the Ghosts? Maybe I am. Some of them will get a huge kick out of this I'm sure. They'll share it around, everyone will read it. The journal of the Last Holdout. What the **** ever. I hope they don't find it, but if they do, I can't do much about it. I guess what I really hope is that it somehow survives for millions of years, and the next monkey to evolve a big enough brain to develop archaeology finds it. Maybe they'll call it a religious text, pretending to understand the meaning. Maybe they'll Rosetta Stone it out of an old Canadian cereal box and a French dictionary. You go, Next Monkeys, you go. Come to think of it, I'm not sure how you even made it, Next Monkeys. Are the Ghosts still around? If they are, throw some feces at them for me. And, I cannot stress this enough, don't believe a ****ing word they say. One of the first things I figured out when I got the light in here is that I'm in the United States right now. There's a liquor section. I wish I knew more about US geography... I don't know how far South the prairies go, so there's no way I can figure out what state this is. I have no idea why I care. Actually, probably I can figure it out if I spend some time looking around in here, but right now I'm having a better time just sitting here, back to the counter, pen in hand, writing down my train of thought. Sorry, I'm getting distracted, my narrative is falling to pieces. My apologies Next Monkeys. You have to understand, I'm not representative of humanity. I'm totally bat**** ****ing crazy. I've been on the run for years, at war for years more, and all alone for months. Humans are not supposed to work like this. I'm broken. Anyway after I found the liquor I broke a four-winter-long abstinence and drunk myself into a funk. Can you really blame me? I can, I haven't had a hangover in four years and I forgot how much fun they weren't. I binged on some bottled water in the morning, and the headache is mostly gone now. Did you know you can miss the gross-ass taste of plasticky water that's been sitting in the bottle too long? You can. It can be the most awesome taste you've ever experienced. For me, it reminds me of summer and a different world. One litre bottle of water sitting out on the porch, two hours of yardwork, hot sun. Taking a break, grabbing a drink and it's all hot and plasticky. Pulling a face. Theresa laughing at me. God I miss her. So here I am. Hangover's fading. I ate some canned beans, and luckily they were still okay. New Monkeys, if you find any of our canned food, watch out! If the can's swollen, it's got nasty bacteria in it that will paralyze and kill you. Gross stuff. We're not trying to trap you or anything, those cans just weren't meant to last until a new species evolved to reconquer our planet. I apologise in advance for any misunderstandings. I will try to make it up to you with some chemistry lessons some day, okay? Oh yeah, sorry. I got distracted there again. After I ate my beans and did not contract botulism, I picked up this journal and started writing and farting, and here we are. Caught up. I'm Rick Koh. nice to meet you. ---------------------------------------------------------- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerena Posted June 12, 2011 Report Share Posted June 12, 2011 Keep writing! I get Chuck Palahniuk, Richard Matheson, Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake) type vibes from reading this. I see that you're from Calgary. They have a writers group that meets up: http://www.meetup.com/writers-147/ I got involved with a writers group in my hometown and it's helped me stay motivated and focused with my writing. Currently, all I have been writing are short plays. The writer's group is just a great place to be around others who have a common goal, so I'd highly suggest checking out the website. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erk Posted June 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 12, 2011 Keep writing!I get Chuck Palahniuk, Richard Matheson, Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake) type vibes from reading this. I see that you're from Calgary. They have a writers group that meets up: http://www.meetup.com/writers-147/ I got involved with a writers group in my hometown and it's helped me stay motivated and focused with my writing. Currently, all I have been writing are short plays. The writer's group is just a great place to be around others who have a common goal, so I'd highly suggest checking out the website. Thanks very much for the high compliments! I actually did keep writing. It gets rougher from here out, but I don't mind sharing the rest of the first section. Thanks for the advice on the writing group. I used to do writing workshops with my friends in Japan, and they were a great source of inspiration and feedback. -- Hi, loyal readers. It's evening now, and I have been feeling awful all day. Since my entry this morning, where I refered to you as New Monkeys, I realised that you could be totally different. What if ducks evolve intelligence next, or octopodes? I'm so sorry. Understand, it's difficult to imagine a duck reading this and comprehending it, but I'll try to remain open-minded from here. Something amazing happened today. I lit a fire out in the weed-encrusted parking lot of this place, and I got out my ol' trusty skillet that I've been carting around since Saskatoon. I still have some pemmican, it kept me going through the winter, but I'm so sick of it I think the pemmican is as much responsible for driving me crazy as loneliness and being a fugitive. So I fried up the pemmican in chunks (that's already a pretty good way of improving it) and then did the best thing I've done in years. I dumped in a can of tomatoes and some dried noodles and I made ****ing spaghetti. I could have added a lot more but as it stands this is gonna be my dinner and breakfast. I don't want to waste one drop of this beautiful canned ambrosia. I don't think the noodles were good anymore, I'm pretty sure they have a shelf life, but they soaked up the water and went lovely and tender. I don't remember what they were supposed to taste like. I'm happy. That's really saying something. Today I found some mail the owners of this place (Barry's Gas, but in my mind it's already just the Station) left under the register. I am apparently in North Dakota. That's kind of unexciting. Last time I knew where I was, I was in Eastern Saskatchewan. I mean, great, I went South and I didn't freeze to death, but after that winter I felt like I'd travelled halfway across the Earth, and here I am just a little bit further into the Great Plains. Walking sucks. I guess it doesn't help spending weeks holed up in a snow fort talking to yourself and gnawing on pemmican. ****ing pemmican. I really like it here. The owners had a little suite in the back that I unlocked today, pretty quaint. Little dinette, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, nice little living area. It doesn't look like there was much to do but watch the gas station and compain about the weather. I guess they had the internet, too, of course. I'm going to sleep on the couch tonight. The owners have probably been dead since before the war, but I owe them a little respect for leaving the place so nice for me. Besides, sleeping on a couch is a luxury I haven't had in forever. Lucky for me the weather is dustbowl dry here. The furniture is kinda gross by the standards of civilisation (to which I no longer hold myself), but I haven't seen anything mouldy. It's like a tomb in here. Appropriate, I guess, at least in my usual morbid kind of mood. There are photos hanging on the walls. Young couple getting married, a kid growing up, graduation. Hurts a little to look at them, but it's an old hurt. That kind of memory has been on the edge of my brain for way too long to do any real damage anymore. Back in the war, I was the Remote officer on a scout car. My Driver, Len, never took that stuff so easy. The Ghosts got him with a message from his daughter. Broke his concentration just long enough for them to jam my contact. It was just an instant before I rescrambled and got access back. When I did, the car was full of Len. I took the turret and shot out their Scanner, but all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Lenny together again. We wised up to that tactic pretty fast, but they got new ones. That's what the whole war was like. The Ghosts had no problem with fighting dirty. They tried that **** on me once, with Theresa. It was pretty early on. I think I really hurt the Ghost wearing her face. At the time I felt bad about it, but I worked through it. I guess that's why I'm still alive and nobody else is. Last one left? Maybe. The odds are pretty slim though. There were other tribes, I can't be the only one to stick it out this long. I'm going to hole up in this place for a while, build up my strength and my supplies, but I don't think I'll stay forever. If there are other people out there, I think I need to find them for my own sake. Maggie was a pain in the ass, one of the whiniest people I've ever met, but I miss even her. Writing here is helping, but it's not going to work for everything; humans are social, we need contact. Maybe I'll seal this place up when I'm done. I could come back and winter here someday. It's comfortable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erk Posted June 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 12, 2011 If you are going for realism then drop the term "buddy" from the army lingo, it has a serious negative connotation. As the old saying goes: "friends are friends, pals are pals, but buddies sleep together". Hm. this is set quite a ways ahead of our time, so the slang may have changed, but I was already considering changing it to the more boring 'Driver'. Maybe I'll call that the straw on the camel's back. Just a funny aside; I can't remember where I heard it but someone was advancing the idea that another civilization could never follow in our foot steps for a very long time because we have used up all the readily available sources of energy. They would in essence never get past the industrial revolution and because anaerobes have evolved to the level that they have, we will never have the same conditions necessary for the creation of fossil fuels. Heh. I may actually steal that almost verbatim at some point, if you don't mind. It would fit well with the narrative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a1b1 Posted June 12, 2011 Report Share Posted June 12, 2011 If this were a book, I would read it Job well done Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
astrogirl Posted June 12, 2011 Report Share Posted June 12, 2011 I like it, Erk! I'm into writing, too, and I'm working on a couple of short things. Maybe I'll post them if I ever get them done! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erk Posted June 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 12, 2011 I like it, Erk! I'm into writing, too, and I'm working on a couple of short things. Maybe I'll post them if I ever get them done! I'd be happy to share critique with you any time as well, now or in school Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerena Posted June 12, 2011 Report Share Posted June 12, 2011 If this were a book, I would read it Job well done +1 this is better than "the girl with the dragon tattoo" (which I can NOT get into right now, two chapters in...) As I read your story, Erk, I like imagining I'm a highly evolved octopode. And that you are just a lost human. Awesome. I feel like this should have been my summer reading. And I'm greedy, I want more to read haha. Keep it up! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isix Posted June 12, 2011 Report Share Posted June 12, 2011 This is fantastic! Totally get the Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro vibe Also, Cerena, your blog is so good! I've been meaning to tell you that. I used to read this comic a couple years ago called ScutMonkey, but I guess the author is too busy with her residency now. Anyways, it's great to see that other premeds and mess write! I've met so many people on this forum and at interview weekends that are athletic and/or musical, but few seem to write...I felt all nerdy and alone. Mind you, I barely manage to write something long enough before I come back to it and erase it, and most often inspiration only chooses to strike when I'm in school and not sitting at home in the summer. But at least I'm inspired (and grossly intimidated) now. Erk, write more soon! This whole Ghost business is intriguing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isix Posted June 12, 2011 Report Share Posted June 12, 2011 I like it, Erk! I'm into writing, too, and I'm working on a couple of short things. Maybe I'll post them if I ever get them done! Do so! Clearly we have eager readers of amateur fiction on this board It'll also give me the courage to post here...right now, only my sister and one of my best friends is shown my work... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erk Posted June 13, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 13, 2011 This is fantastic! Totally get the Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro vibe Also, Cerena, your blog is so good! I've been meaning to tell you that. I used to read this comic a couple years ago called ScutMonkey, but I guess the author is too busy with her residency now. Anyways, it's great to see that other premeds and mess write! I've met so many people on this forum and at interview weekends that are athletic and/or musical, but few seem to write...I felt all nerdy and alone. Mind you, I barely manage to write something long enough before I come back to it and erase it, and most often inspiration only chooses to strike when I'm in school and not sitting at home in the summer. But at least I'm inspired (and grossly intimidated) now. Erk, write more soon! This whole Ghost business is intriguing! Thanks very much! I've always found it hard to get a storyline I'm happy with. To be honest, this is the first one I've found that I am pretty sure is not entirely derivative from whatever I've been reading recently, because I intentionally have taken a bit of a break from my usual books to try to clear my mind. It's heavily influenced by a lot of my favourites, but I don't think it's a copycat. Last time I tried to write, I got 30,000 words into a novel and then realised it was basically just a paraphrasing of the Gunslinger. Doh. That said, I would never have had the confidence to start this one if I'd not already made it to nearly a novel-length piece in the past, whether or not I was all that satisfied with my earlier work. And I would never have made it to that long a story if I hadn't received input and confidence from my friends. You should really share your work. On a place like this, you won't get negative responses. The worst you can expect is constructive feedback that will make you a stronger writer. As for me writing more, what I have posted is called 'chapter 1' in my source material, although I don't think I'll be using the chapter distinction in the actual story because it's so arbitrary to the flow of the text. Each chapter is 2000-3000 words long, and I'm most of the way through chapter 5 now. I'm not in a hurry to share the later chapters, as they are more of a rough job than a polished product. Since I've received so much positive response, I'll post "chapter 2" here in a sec. Keep in mind, it's less complete than what I've done so far. I really want to flesh it out and expand it, but I haven't had any big ideas for what to put in just yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erk Posted June 13, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 13, 2011 Hi Newbies! I hope you don't mind me calling you that. It's the most species nonspecific greeting I can think of. I don't know why I need something to call you, I guess it just makes me more comfortable? Maybe it makes me feel like I'm talking to someone other than myself. I'm sorry I haven't written more, you must have missed me horribly. The last four days were busy! I went out on the hunt and scored a cow. I write that like it's hard, but really these poor ****ers haven't got a chance against a badass like me. I'm amazed they're still alive. When we still had a civilisation we all thought cows wouldn't stand a chance in the wild; they're domesticated beyond all reason. They need humans to do everything from milk them to inseminate them. I confess I have not spent much time watching the mating and milking habits of the wild bovine, but I can tell you they haven't got much smarter. They're catching on though. After the war, you could basically just walk up to one and smash it in the head with a rock, and have meat for months. Now I have to hide and shoot it in the head with my crossbow. By "hide" I mean "stand twenty feet away and don't make any sudden movements". Some day I may have to actually hunt them. Catching a cow is a huge responsibility. I had to butcher it quickly both to prevent spoilage and to keep wild animals from coming in. I have a fortress now that could hold out against a bear, but I don't really feel like tempting any of the big fellas nevertheless. Plus, it's not only bears. One time against all odds, my tribe found ourselves facing down a pride of lions. I **** you not. That is not a fun experience. You usually don't prepare for lions in the foothills of the Rockies. Anyway, I didn't want to leave a cow carcass hanging too long in case I wound up nose-to-nose with a silverback gorilla or something. So, I ate what I could, cured some more, started up some pemmican, and tanned the hide. I'll be making the leftover bones into all kinds of great things over the next few days. Maybe I'll bore you with my projects, maybe not, it all depends on how well behaved you are. By the way: old refrigerators still make great cold-smoking boxes. I don't care what they say about chemicals leeching from the plastic (frankly, cancer thirty years down the road is the least of my concerns). Yet another great thing to come out of squatting in an old house. I've been keeping my brain busy the last few days by thinking about what I want to talk about in here, and I decided I'd try not to make it a day-to-day account of my survival. Honestly, you Newbies must be pretty okay at surviving to have made it to the Brain Evolving phase of your existence, so you don't need my help there. Plus if you're ducks I don't even know what you eat. Probably not pemmican. So, today, I'm going to Reminisce About Times Before. --- Reminiscence 1: Richard in School. A Short Story by Rick Koh. Non Fiction KOH921.001 Published by the Richard Koh Press, West Nowhere, North Dakota Copyright Whenever the **** This Is All Rights Reserved. Any truly good story of my education has to start with Tanya Denisof, who, in those fumbling later days of high school, taught me that even overweight nerds can find love. Well, satisfaction of lust, anyway; love didn't come until a lot later. I wonder what happened to Tanya; I never looked her up before the war, so I don't know if she's a Ghost, if she died earlier, or even if she's out there like me, trucking through the wilderness. Picturing pudgy, pretty, good-humoured Tanya dragging a travois across the plains makes me smile and cringe at the same time. I hope she made it out before things went mad. When I wasn't psyching myself out over Tanya's abundant curves, I was a damn fine student, but I never knew what I wanted to study. I'm good at a lot of things. Before I went crazy, I was really smart. Not a genius or anything, but I remember stuff and I can put pieces together, or I could when I was rational. These days my memory fails me randomly, and sometimes I realise my decisions are profoundly irrational. In college I finally settled on a general science degree, mostly chemistry and biology stuff. I'm pretty good with computers, too, so I did some programming, but I focused more on the core sciences. It may seem unlikely, looking at me now, but I didn't do much athletic or outdoor stuff. That's how I wound up in Remotes during the war: I couldn't fire a gun or run a mile to save my skin. If I hadn't fallen in with my tribe, I'd have died of starvation after the Route. I guess you probably can't see me unless your civilisation has somehow learned to reconstruct me from my bones. I'm no spring chicken now, I look a lot older than I am (I think I'm forty-three), but my soft blubberous skin has mostly melted off, and if you see me carrying a spare tire you can bet it's close to autumn and I really am stocking up on nutrients for the winter. There's really no choice. I've walked across most of the Great Plains of North America, from the Rocky Mountains to Hudson's Bay. It's good cardio. After I finished my undergraduate degree, "bachelor of science in whatever took Rick's fancy this semester", I spent a couple years in a really sweet PhD program in North Korea. I worked with Dr Jung "John" Lee, one of the main academics to survive the fall of the Kim regime and the reconstruction of Pyongyang's universities. He was a major figure in the modernisation of NK. Working there was a true joy, and by far the best time of my entire life. I feel I can say that safely, as I'm highly unlikely to have anything else to compare. I met Theresa there: she was a postdoc in the same lab. We were the same age, but she was way more driven than me and smarter, and made it ahead faster. We didn't romance it up right away. She was on a different project, but it would have been weird nevertheless. Still, remembering all the flirtation and things... I think half the lab assumed we were going to hook up before either of us thought it would happen. I did most of my research in pesticides. North Korea was trying to bring its agricultural system into the twenty first century without destroying its environment, and Dr Lee was at the head of that initiative, as with so many others. My research would probably have spearheaded the development of some really cool applications for tailored pesticides through software-evolved bacterial stocks, but that will never matter now. Patents had almost gotten through when the war broke out, and now everyone involved is dead. Well, I assume so. Pyongyang was a major city, and the Ghosts took out the major cities very quickly. Not that I know for sure what happened; overseas travel isn't exactly on my list of things to try soon. Actually, I lie. There's still me . If I can find a copy of my PhD thesis, I'll attach it. Deal? I don't know if you Newbies have developed post-quantum computing, but if you have you'll totally love what I did. By the time we left Pyongyang, Theresa and I were engaged. That's a different part of my education, and I'll leave it for another day. I got a job back home in Canada for the Department of Agriculture. It was a sweet gig, although not as fun as life in Korea had been. Five years later, the war started. I knew my side already, because by then Theresa was dead and all I had left was a Ghost. I'm grateful I kept my opinions quiet for the Ghost's sake: the major movers and shakers on social media were targeted in the initial offensive, and only a few made it through the rest of the war. I dout any are alive now. I'll save the war stories for another day, I'm trying to explain who I am here. I could have been wicked at developing chemical weapons or something, but chemicals are useless against Ghosts, so Command put me at a desk and taught me to operate Remotes because of my computing background. Operating a Remote is a bit like playing a cooperative video game, except that the other player, your Driver, is inside the Remote and if you **** up he or she will die. Tons of fun for everyone! I learned more in that job than I did in my PhD. Important things, like how to repair an electric engine using remote-controlled arms (without wikipedia!), how much acceleration will crush a human skeleton, how much blood a person holds, and how many iterations it takes the Ghosts to build a Scanner that's completely immune to small arms fire. When I learned that last one, the war was basically over already, and I wasn't the same me anymore. Maybe you'll scoff at me for this. Maybe you'll stop reading. I'm not really proud to admit it, but I'm not ashamed anymore either. When I realised the Ghosts could adapt faster than us under every situation, I bailed. I left my post and headed for the hills. By the time I came back to that post it had been completely overrun and was manufacturing Scanners and sending them out into the wilderness to hunt for tribes like mine. I lost a lot of Drivers in the war, but I'm proud to say I was under par. There was Len of course, he was my first dead partner. He only lasted a month. Then Sandy, she was excellent. We made it through a lot, me and Sandy. Our finest moment was when she took the car on silent-run right up to a major Server; we didn't do much silent-run by then and the Scanners missed us somehow. We actually managed to take that thing out with planted charges. It was our only unqualified success in the entire war, although now I wonder if the Ghosts let us have it for some reason. Sandy bought it two days later when her encampment was infiltrated. I never saw her dead, and I am glad of that. She was good. After her there was Marc, then Eiko, then finally Glen, who had been a Remote like me but got moved to Driver because we just didn't have enough left. Then, for one short week, I tried running the car on my own with no Driver at all. We thought they'd jam us out and stop us from firing, but they didn't even bother. By then there was nothing our weapons could do, like I said. So I ran, and I ran into the tribe. They almost killed me as a zombie when they met me. People always seem to assume I'm a zombie. I think it's just the way I talk. The tribe was my last great educator. I have no idea what Chief was before she was Chief. I'm going to guess 'gym teacher'. She was about sixty, built like a chimpanzee: all wirey muscle, gangly limbs, and grace you'd never guess from looking at her. I was more than twenty years younger than her, and even after she and the tribe worked that desk jockey fat off me, I could never keep up with her. I'm still not fifty and I think she'd have me beat, if she were alive, even though she'd be pushing seventy. As it stands she's probably slower what with all the decomposition. We lost Chief about three years ago, the sixth year after the Route. Molotov thought it was his fault, but I think she was just tired. You can only go on surviving so long with nothing to live for. Without kids, without a future, there's not a lot left for us. That's what got Maggie, and it's probably what'll get me. Chief knew everything, and what she didn't know she had in survival guides. We each carried one book. I still have mine, A Guide to Herbs in the Great Plains. It's part of the reason I try not to leave the prairies. I'd love to carry more books around, but it's just me carrying all this crap. I've probably memorised Guide to Herbs; if I ever find another book I like so much maybe I'll trade and learn something new. Anyway, Chief kept us alive. Taught us how to hunt, butcher, tan, cure, make bannock and pemmican, make a canoe, paddle a canoe, make a fire, survive a winter. Sometimes I wondered if she was a Walking Dead, but she looked way too human for that (and of course I know better now). She knew so much, it's hard to believe a single person could have that much knowledge without internet access. The tribe was small. There were eight of us at first, and fifteen at the highest point. That last tribe, before we lost Chief, was what I really think of as "the tribe". Me, Maggie, Tran, Molotov, Beans, Kim, and Chief herself. If you want to know the truth, I didn't actually like a single member of the group. I include myself in that. We had a lot in common: we were all survivors, we all hated the Ghosts, we all knew (by that point) how to live in the wilderness. We were all cowards who had fled at some point in the war, correctly presuming that we had no hope of victory. The only distinction I have over other members of the tribe is that I'm the only one not dead at the time of writing this. Beans stayed in the war longer. Chief and Tran knew more about surviving. Molotov and Maggie had had a harder past. Hell, Kim had a higher education, although as a theoretical physics professor she didn't have as much practical knowledge from her degrees. I was the tribe's Joe Average. After I lost Maggie, I used to wonder what kept me going over all the others. I really can't put my finger on it even now. That brings me to the end of this story, and the last thing I've learned how to do, just in the last year: Let go. Once you get practice, it's not as hard as it sounds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erk Posted June 15, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 15, 2011 Thanks, this is exactly the kind of feedback I'm looking for. Sounds like the remote thing comes from Moon 44. I'm interested to see what the ghosts are going to be like and the back-story there. It's been challenging for me not revealing what the ghosts are too quickly. I have a big reveal in chapter 3 that I'm working on paring back to keep the mystery alive. I haven't read Moon 44, maybe I should take a look at it I, personally, would avoid details about education and things that are hard to relate too unless you have been through them or are going to spend more time explaining. I liked how you started with the undergrad in whatever fancied your interest but it got a bit "sciency" and that turns some people off. I do have a tendency to get too excited with fictional science. Fortunately, adding a simple "I won't bore you with the details" kind of comment would be quite in character, I'll look into it. Irrational people don't know they are being irrational even if they have periods of lucidity. Actually I should avoid commenting on pshych stuff because I am woefully unqualified but it just seems counterintuitive to me. This is actually a catch, not a critique. I don't think Rick is actually geniunely irrational. I haven't decided if he's aware of this or not. People who flake out in combat usually do so early. The harder you become with experience the less likely you are to bail no matter how bad things get. That and although it makes your character real it also makes me not like him and therefore harder to identify with him. The not liking him aspect is going to be addressed a bit in chapter 4, but I admit I'm not aiming for a perfectly sympathetic character. The 'flaking out' is a bit of a misconstrual I think: I may have to make it a little more clear here. Rick didn't abandon his post in mid-combat; as I see it in my mind, he deserted between missions. He wouldn't leave his Driver out without a Remote. Were you unclear on that? If so I'll add a bit more clarity to the passage. The personal reasons for his desertion will be illuminated over time, although I don't expect them to resonate with everyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leon Posted June 15, 2011 Report Share Posted June 15, 2011 In case you haven't heard of it, there's an awesome forum : http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php for writers. We have amateurs as well as dozens of published writers, as well as million-dollar-contract writers. When you have a certain number of posts, there's a Share You Work sub forum where everyone critiques everyone else's work. I used to write fiction but stopped (I prefer to think paused!) due to school and that site is very good for support. gl! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erk Posted June 15, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 15, 2011 I got that he left during some downtime, probably after thinking about it too long, and that it wasn't in the heat of battle or anything. That said he still left his "post" instead of his unit being whiped out or some sort of mutual agreement to split up. No one wants 100% likeable, and I am a huge fan of the anti hero, the problem is that if he is willing to give up the fight for mankind for survival then he will always put survival first and heros are supposed to be self sacrificing not self calculating. Still enjoying it. As for moon 44 I would just rent/download/steal it. Its bad early 90s science fiction with an ultra low budget and absolutely no stars or acting skill. However it does OK on the special effects for its time. As long as it's clear what really happened that's cool. I can understand why you wouldn't be entirely sympathetic to his past; Rick himself isn't. Here are a couple passages that have changed since I posted Chapter 2. First, I generalised some of the discussion of research. I wanted to keep the political stuff in there as it may become useful to the story (it also may not. I honestly haven't decided). The rest has been shrugged off to make it more flavour, less gristle. I did most of my research in pesticides. North Korea was trying to bring its agricultural system into the twenty first century without destroying its environment, and Dr Lee was at the head of that initiative, as with so many others. My research would probably have spearheaded the development of some really cool work, groundbreaking stuff for a lot more of the world than just NK. Not that it matters anymore. Patents had almost gotten through when the war broke out, and now everyone involved is dead. Well, I assume so. Pyongyang was a major city, and the Ghosts took out the major cities very quickly. Not that I know for sure what happened; overseas travel isn't exactly on my list of things to try soon. Actually, I lie. There's still me . If I can find a copy of my PhD thesis, I'll attach it. Deal? I don't know if you Newbies have developed post-quantum computing, but if you have you'll totally love what I did. Despite the fact that Para D clearly understood what was meant, I still decided to expand on the section about leaving the post. It actually seems to me like something Rick would feel obligated to explain more clearly. It also helps set the stage a bit better for later events. Maybe you'll scoff at me for this. Maybe you'll stop reading. I'm not really proud to admit it, but I'm not ashamed anymore either. When I realised the Ghosts could adapt faster than us under every situation, I bailed. I waited until my car was back in the garage and I had a cooldown; then, when my captain thought I was sleeping, I left my outpost and headed for the hills. I wasn't the only one... but that didn't help my conscience any. By the time I came back to that outpost it had been completely overrun and was manufacturing Scanners and sending them out into the wilderness to hunt for tribes like mine. I never found out what happened to my captain or the others. I did once meet another deserter from my 'post, but she'd abandoned the same night I did. Maybe we all jumped ship. Wouldn't surprise me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
*Pixie* Posted June 15, 2011 Report Share Posted June 15, 2011 Maybe you'll scoff at me for this. Maybe you'll stop reading. I'm not really proud to admit it, but I'm not ashamed anymore either. When I realised the Ghosts could adapt faster than us under every situation, I bailed. I waited until my car was back in the garage and I had a cooldown; then, when my captain thought I was sleeping, I left my outpost and headed for the hills. I wasn't the only one... but that didn't help my conscience any. By the time I came back to that outpost it had been completely overrun and was manufacturing Scanners and sending them out into the wilderness to hunt for tribes like mine. I never found out what happened to my captain or the others. I did once meet another deserter from my 'post, but she'd abandoned the same night I did. Maybe we all jumped ship. Wouldn't surprise me. I like this addition. I can see Para D's point in that Rick's decision to leave is not heroic. At the same time however, it makes Rick more of a REAL human with doubts and fears rather than Tom Cruise from the War of the Worlds lol. I think it also sets up a stage for character development, since he now comes across as more of an enigma to himself and others. It also gives a glimmer of hope to common folks like us, that he is a hero in disguise or a hero-to-be (like we all wish to be) and that there will be moment of REAL glory for him. Looking forward to moreness of writingness Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
*Pixie* Posted June 15, 2011 Report Share Posted June 15, 2011 It reminds me a bit of "The Walking Dead" series and "I am Legend". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erk Posted June 20, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 20, 2011 I'm a little nervous about this next chapter, because it's the first one with real spoilers. I'd really like to hear peoples' theories about what is happening re. the Ghosts and stuff, so that I know how much I've given away and how much is still to be revealed. That way I can adequately anticipate what will be a plot twist and what the readers might have already guessed. Dream Journal Woke up shouting angrily. Middle of night. Storm outside. Dream: Riding a bison across prairies. Scanner chasing us, can't seem to catch up (****ing fast bison!). We fall in a pit and land on minecart rails. Now I'm steering a train although in dream, train cars are also bison (but they are train cars. you know, dreams). friends keep throwing themselves in front of train. Chief, Theresa, Maggie, John. Splat splat splat. There's a cowcatcher on the train full of pieces of them, the keep shouting conflicting advice at me so I ignore it all. Train exits the underground through bright light into a city street, I ride through the city on the train but now I'm alone, friends are gone, city is empty. Come to a convenience store, see my face on the front page of a newspaper: "Inside Richard Kou: Interview with the Last Man Alive". I realise they misspelled my name and wake up shouting at them. --- Sorry about that. I had a dream last night. When I woke up it felt very important so I wrote it down as soon as I could get a light going. In retrospect, I think I'm just going crazy, as always. It's been two days since my last entry. I finished the last bit of preparation on my cow, and made an amazing stew with beef and corn. Corn! I also started cleaning out the small produce bin in one of the fridges, it's got little shoots growing in it. I don't know what they are, but they could be remnants of something that went to seed in here in the dark and has finally germinated. Who knows. I worked for the department of agriculture, but growing things from seed is not something I claim expertise in. Now, if I get bugs on here and have access to a pre-collapse industrial chemical facility, then I can show those little crawlies who is the ****in' BOSS. Whatever. I took the little seedlings outside and made a little planter for them out of some chunks of asphault from the parking lot. Maybe I'll get some fresh veggies. It's still early spring and I think I'll stay here for a while. Another big deal: I found a generator out back. It's gas powered. It's not in the greatest shape, but not too bad either. There is oil in the store and - here's the real kicker - gas in the pumps. Of course, the pumps don't work. I've been sucking little splishes of gas out of the tanks through the access hole; not too promising so far. I also think the gas is probably bad (this stuff does go sour eventually, depending on how airtight the container is), but if I can grease up the gennie well, maybe I can make it work anyway. Just once in a little while, I could turn on the lights inside. Or more important, maybe I could power some of the more useful stuff. Get the pumps working long enough to drain the main gas tank for example. Or work a power tool and build something neat. I dunno. I haven't had electricity for so long I've kinda forgotten what it's like. Maybe I could log into the internet and see what the Ghosts have done with the place. Heh. That'd get the Scanners on me faster than you can say "www.google.ca". I also spotted a big pile of old blue rays and a tv with a player. I think it will run without a net connection, the kind of people to keep blue rays around were not the kind of people to be up on technology. Among other things, they have a full boxed set, all eight seasons of Mohinder. I hate sitcoms, yet somehow this appeals to me deeply and viscerally. I can imagine watching a charicaturised version of the society I grew up in (I was thirteen when Mohinder started airing) and the very concept is... imagining it is like imagining winning the lottery. It sounds great, but I can't reall accept that it could actually come to pass. --- Dear Newbies. Even a very well maintained large gas storage tank goes kinda skanky after over a decade. Make sure to filter out the precipitate (I did this, yay me) and be prepared for a stinky engine. I'm still hacking from the fumes, I didn't really expect it to work at all; all things considered, I am impressed. So, the gennie is running. Right now I'm just charging every single battery I could get my hands on. As soon as they're all juiced up I'll shut it back down and think about what I want to do before next time. I doubt I could run anything that even remotely required a steady AC power source, and even if I knew how to stabilise the power I'm not sure I have the resources available. However, lots of good things take batteries. With batteries on my hands, though, I decided to try an interesting experiment. I'm just about to turn on a little clock radio I found inside that runs on batteries. Chances of picking anything up on FM/AM? Pretty nil, I know. However, it's safe. I'm pretty sure the Ghosts still can't track a receiver, just a transmitter. They couldn't during the war. I don't know much about how radio works but I think it's actually impossible. Okay, here I go. Switching it on. ... That was boring, I'm picking up static. No big surprise. I'm going to pan through the frequencies on AM first, then FM. I've also plugged a few batteries into a flashlight and set up an electric lamp. It's weird having steady light again, I'd forgotten how much better it was than a candle. It's actually a little bright in here, I can see how dusty the place is. Even with the windows open the sunlight doesn't penetrate that well into the core of the house. Neat. There is still something out there. On FM 91.1, there's a slow beep instead of static. One beep per second. It's probably a standby signal or something. I'm well aware that the chances are it's a signal from the Ghosts. Maybe it's not a beep, maybe each "blip" I hear is actually a microcosm of information that can be interpreted by machine intelligences like the Scanners. Maybe it's just there to give false hope to Holdouts like me. Whatever the case, hearing a realtime confirmation that out there somewhere, an old radio transmitter is sending out a signal on FM 91.1 is comforting. In my mind's eye, I see an old radio tower, somewhere on the outskirts of a small town, running on a battery that has held out against all odds; broadcasting this last, meaningless standby signal just to let the world know that once, there were humans. I'm going to leave the radio on for a little while. --- Tonight, while I listened to the radio blip once per second, I read some science fiction short stories by candlelight. Found a thin paperback pocket book in the old owners' meager library, and as an avid reader, this is another pleasure I have missed for too long. However, reading "I have no mouth and I must scream"? Not the best plan for the lonely, insane survivor of a global apocalypse. Woops, silly ****. I can't sleep. Thinking about the Ghosts, about what we did to ourselves. I usually keep this stuff way at the back of my mind. I guess now that I've got it up at the front I'll tell you Newbies another story, maybe that'll get it out so I can sleep again --- Reminiscence 2: How to End the World. A Cautionary Essay by Rick Koh. Non Fiction KOH921.002 Published by the Richard Koh Press, West Nowhere, North Dakota Copyright Whenever the **** This Is All Rights Reserved. Jennifer Nguyen was the first human to die and live forever. Well, okay, I know some religious types would have argued this vehemently. They're all dead now, so I don't give a **** what they think. This is my history and I get to make up what I want. Miss Nguyen was a twenty-something college student at the University of Delaware. Or some other Eastern US place, I really don't remember and it doesn't matter. She was, as far as I know, an unremarkable student, noteworthy only because she made one really bad mistake. She worked as a summer student for Dr Mark Callow, a research radiologist developing a new technology for imaging biological structures. She was either naive or victimised; she let Dr Callow use his technology on her before he'd attained proper permission for human testing. Now, in Dr Callow's meager credit, he'd used his device on many different animals, from worms right up to dogs, with no unexpected side effects. Also in his defense, he had no way of knowing Jennifer would prove to be one of the smallish percent of humans that react violently to the seemingly innocuous combination of scanning technologies Callow subjected her to. Long story short, Jennifer suffered multiple aneurisms in the minutes following the experiments. Fast, violent, fatal. Dr Callow was jailed after a nasty and short lawsuit, and the Nguyen family collected enormous amounts in compensation from all kinds of people involved. What occurred to nobody for years is that Dr Callow's experiment had worked swimmingly. Jennifer's body had been scanned to the molecule and stored on a hard disk, which languished in an evidence room until another breakthrough, the development of post-quantum computers. I'm not going to go into detail here because frankly I don't know the details. As best I can explain it, post-quantum computers have semi-infinite processing power. I don't know how better to describe it. There's something to do with folding data that I don't understand, but for all intents and purposes one post-quantum computer can have as much computational power as it needs to. Or something. Even when I did research using PQ computers I didn't have to really understand them. By the time I did want to understand how a PQ worked, it was too late. If we had an expert here I'm sure he'd piss all over my explanation, but my above comment about religious types applies here as well. Once PQ computing took off, we were in a golden age. Things that had been prohibitive before were not. We could do ridiculous things, solve problems just by throwing huge calculations through a PQ processor. The limit was our ability to develop software to suit this new power; no longer could our hardware hold us back. Dr Jilan Al-Kassab was one of the pioneers in truly creative software. She developed what she claimed was an accurate simulation of the human brain, a true artificial intelligence that could think like a person. The only problem was that, without a mind to inhabit it, she couldn't prove it worked. Then, somehow (possibly just through the news) she heard about Jennifer Nguyen, and a match was made in heaven or hell, depending on who you asked at the time. Nguyen's parents had been intractable to other researchers, but when offered a serious chance to speak to their daughter again, they finally released their grip on Callow's research materials. Al-Kassab obtained the hard disk with Nguyen stored on it and plugged it into her simulation software. Lots of Holdouts treat Dr Al-Kassab as a villain here. I think they're as wrong as can be. This woman was a pure scientist. Not only that, what I've read about her suggests she did what she could to keep her inventions humane and reasonable. Towards the end, she was the closest we had to an advocate on the Other Side. It's easy to make it sound like things went from there to here in three simple steps. I'll try to give the story justice. Recall, this is an arc that's taken my entire life to reach this point. First, in science, nothing is instant. It probably took Dr Al-Kassab years to get Jennifer online. When she did, though, nobody was truly prepared for what happened, except perhaps Dr Al-Kassab. Jennifer worked. That is to say, she was a digital version of herself. She had her memories, and her parents said she acted like Jennifer as well. She was also kind of insane, but we tried to give her credit. She'd just woken up from death to find that years had passed and she had no memory of them, and to learn that her human body was long rotted away. Books and books have been written on what happened to Jennifer after she awoke. Years of realtime research went into studying her, although she was paused and unpaused at many points. I don't think that helped her any. Really though, the problem was deeper. Jennifer was not Jennifer. She was a ghost of Jennifer, an animated spirit of the dead. At no point had that software been the woman it represented, nor could we guarantee that it was an accurate replica. That's not what the media thought, and not where the hype went though. Jennifer's parents swore by the replica, and the media ran with that. Dr Al-Kassab was one of the strongest opponents of that attitude, arguing that we had no way of knowing yet how effective the technique was, and that did buy us some time. Whatever the case, our civilisation marched on. Despite the fact that even the inventor of the brain simulation argued against its widespread use, I think we were mostly saved by the fact that Dr Callow's scanning technology was the only one with the resolution to put a human into software, and it was fatal. That is, until a selfish billionaire named Michael Fensler decided to take the thing out of storage, get it polished up, and jump in the chamber, risks be damned. Immortality at the cost of a mortal body didn't seem like such an issue to him, I guess (plus the guy was really ****in' old, so I guess he didn't care). And then we learned that Callow's scan only killed a handful of people with preexisting conditions, and that's when things started to get really messed up. Sorry. Once again, I am tempted to jump the gun here. I'm forgetting the intervening years. This isn't really how it happened and I don't want to lie to you, Newbies, even if it's just by omission. I'm too tired to get this right. Let's talk again later, okay? love Rick. --- It's the middle of the night and the radio just woke me up, I fell asleep on my journal. Sorry about the drool. I think I was dreaming, I thought I heard a voice. --- Definitely heard a voice. Intermittent on the radio. Just heard it again. It's fast and faint. Gonna jot down words as I pick them up, if it repeats again. "Location <some numbers> north, <some numbers> west. Do not bring heuristic tech. Safe zone. Last updated May 13, year 9 after Rout." I'm not sure the date, but the Rout was nine years ago and it's not far from May right now. Obviously it's a trap, there's no chance someone could transmit that without getting Scanners all up in there, but... Well, let's put it this way. Last time I saw a Scanner was year 3, in Saskatoon, way off in the distance. I've been suspecting it for a while: the Ghosts might just not care about the last one or two Holdouts. I'm starting to realise, maybe I don't expect to ever see a Ghost again. Oh yeah. There were coordinates in that signal, I just didn't transcribe them. In the extremely unlikely chance that it's not a trap, I would rather not have the Ghosts find them. It's stupid I know: chances are they can just scan my brain and pick out what I know, but I have to hold on to what I've got. And what I've got is a totally irrational tenacity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erk Posted June 20, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 20, 2011 Later tonight, I'll be setting up a website and posting the entire story to its current extent on it (up to Chapter 7). I'll post a link as soon as I do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erk Posted June 20, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 20, 2011 Can I do the illustrations? Heh. You can submit some if you want. I am thinking of making some margin doodles and drawings of what various things look like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erk Posted June 29, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 29, 2011 Okay! Not sure how that last entry went over, but I have set up a site where I'll be posting my updates as they go. Because this is no longer as heavily and thoroughly vetted, things have a high chance of spontaneously changing as I edit the book. I will try to keep you all posted. The site is http://loneliness.erku.ca. If you have been following along thus far, you'll be on page 16. You may notice that it goes up to page 50! This is most of what I have written so far. I really appreciate the feedback I've been getting on this forum so far, and would love more. Hope you enjoy it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerena Posted July 9, 2011 Report Share Posted July 9, 2011 Okay! Not sure how that last entry went over, but I have set up a site where I'll be posting my updates as they go. Because this is no longer as heavily and thoroughly vetted, things have a high chance of spontaneously changing as I edit the book. I will try to keep you all posted. The site is http://loneliness.erku.ca. If you have been following along thus far, you'll be on page 16. You may notice that it goes up to page 50! This is most of what I have written so far. I really appreciate the feedback I've been getting on this forum so far, and would love more. Hope you enjoy it! Oh, great! I was just thinking to myself today, what happened to Erk's story? Glad I cam back to this thread. I have a lot to read now. This makes me happy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.